Mamata Banerjee to meet BMW boss in Germany

The chief minister reached Munich on Monday evening from Rome following the canonization of Mother Teresa at the Vatican City. She will be in Germany till September 8 to promote closer engagement and cooperation in various fields and explore trade and investment opportunities between Germany and West Bengal, an official communiqué said.Udit Mukherji | TNN | September 06, 2016, 09:20 IST

KOLKATA: Keen to prove a point that the Singur agitation was her inspired opposition to the forceful land acquisition by the then Left Front government and there was no bad blood with industry, chief minister Mamata Banerjee is expected to call on the chief executive officer of German auto giant BMW in Munich on Wednesday.

The chief minister reached Munich on Monday evening from Rome following the canonization of Mother Teresa at the Vatican City. She will be in Germany till September 8 to promote closer engagement and cooperation in various fields and explore trade and investment opportunities between Germany and West Bengal, an official communiqué said.

Before this proposed meeting on Wednesday , a state government delegation led by state finance and industries minister Amit Mitra, chief secretary Basudeb Banerjee and top industrialists will visit the BMW factory in Bayern near Munich on Tuesday .

In order to fulfil a dream of bring ing in big automobile industries to Bengal, a part of the delegation, however, has reached Germany on Monday morning. The meetings started in Dusseldorf -the biggest city of North Rhyne-Westphalia districts -that contributes 20% of the GDP of Germany . Mitra met his counterpart of North Rhyne-Westphalia, N WalterBorjans, on Monday afternoon. “I have given a proposal to the FM of the province to consider North Rhyne as sister state West Bengal. They said the proposal will be forwarded to the external affairs ministry of Germany ,“ he told TOI from Germany.

According to Mitra, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu are also in the run to get sister state status of the province.The FM of North Rhyne said it would bring a business delegation to Bengal.“We have invited him for the third edition of Bengal Global Business Summit,“ Mitra added. According to him, during the interaction, Tata Metaliks, Vikram Solar and BASF shared their experience in Bengal.

Meanwhile, Kolkata mayor Sovan Chatterjee, who is also the state housing minister, told TOI that Dusseldorf, the city of fashion, art and industry, is keen to make Kolkata its twin city . He had a 40-minute interaction with Dusseldorf mayor Thomas Geisel. Following the meeting, Chatterjee said there is a lot of interest abo ut Kolkata as far as Dusseldorf is concerned. “Dusseldorf does not have any twin city in India. So they are interested about our city. A twin city proposal may be signed later,“ he added.

Incidentally, Kunming, the main city of the Yunnan province in China, has a twin city arrangement with Kolkata. “The meeting was a mix of business and civic issues. We invited him for BGBS and he readily agreed. He himself may lead the delegation,“ he added. Chatterjee was accompanied by MSME secretary Rajiva Sinha and members of the industry delegation that includes Keventer group MD Mayank Jalan, River Bank Holdings Sumit Dabriwala.